Here's the thing: Looking like a normal human being in photos is hard.

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And smartphones don't make it easier.

Meghan McCarter

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Manufacturers build them with super-wide-angle lenses that can stretch and distort your face in unflattering ways.

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That's because every focal length of a camera lens (in effect, how zoomed in it is by default) changes the distortion of the object it's shooting. Wide-angle lenses render faces cartoonish. Ultra-long lenses make you look flat and compressed.

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That's why headshot photographers tend to stick to the middle-ground 85 mm lens — a much longer lens than you'd find on any smartphone.

Rafi Letzter/Business Insider

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But you can still take smartphone photos of yourself (and other people) that don't make you look like a total goober.

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The trick is to understand that much of that distortion lies near the edges of the frame and gets exaggerated by any body part projecting toward the camera. In this photo, her jaw looks much larger than it really is because it's pointing toward the device.

Rafi Letzter/Business Insider

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Move a little farther away, move your head a little closer to the middle of the frame, and keep your chin and forehead equidistant from the camera. The result is a selfie that looks a lot more like how your face looks to other people.

Rafi Letzter/Business Insider

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Smartphone photos in which the head is in the middle of the frame and a bit farther away than usual are much more flattering.